Think of them as devices that do the dirty work; just don’t call them drones

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The drone industry’s main lobbyist wants lawmakers to think of drones as extensions of humans: The eyes that can rise above the plumes of a forest fire and the airborne sound sensors that can look for victims of an earthquake.

“This technology is an extension of the eyes and the ears of the human being that knows how to do their job better than anyone else,” said Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, in an interview with MarketWatch. The association counts among its members big-name companies like Boeing Co.
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and Lockheed Martin Corp.
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as well as smaller firms and universities like Carnegie Mellon.

Just don’t call these devices drones, please. The industry prefers unmanned aircraft systems, a term that’s more removed from the devices’ military origins.

But whatever you call them, the trade-group chief says the industry is moving faster than regulations can keep up — and is pressing the government to develop rules and open the skies for the technology. The Federal Aviation Administration is now working under a deadline of September 2015 to write rules for drones to share the skies.

Naturally, the industry isn’t lobbying for heavy regulations. Rather, clarity. Toscano warns that without a road map from regulators, the technology is going to lap the rulemakers. And then it will be even tougher to rein in bad practices.

“If we don’t start doing this sooner than later, then you are going to have situations that are undesirable,” said Toscano. “ I will you tell you, right now, today, people are flying this technology because 1. They either don’t know they’re not supposed to for what they’re trying to do, or 2. They don’t care.“

“In either regard, this is something that has to be addressed sooner than later because if not, it’s going to form itself. And once that happens, it’s going to be twice as hard to try to regulate it after the fact.”

Toscano, who confesses he likes the “Game Boy-ing” aspects of flying a consumer drone, spoke to MarketWatch from the association’s offices in Arlington, VA. by phone recently. The interview has been edited and condensed.

MarketWatch: Your office opened in 1972. Fast forward more than 40 years and companies like Amazon
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.com want to deliver packages by drone. Is the pace of change in the industry as great as it’s ever been, or greater?

Bloomberg

The Amazon.com Inc. Prime Air octocopter is seen at an undisclosed location in this undated handout photograph released to the media on Monday, Dec. 2, 2013.

Toscano: This is a technology that has been born from the military side of the house. Like many other technologies that have come out of the military side, it is now being transitioned to the civil and the commercial side. And like many other technologies that have done that, the military side is great in the creation of it, but the true application of it, the world-changing aspects of it, usually don’t happen until we get to the commercial side. It becomes more affordable, it becomes reliable, and it becomes available to everyone.

That’s what you’re starting to see right now, there’s transitioning that has taken place. Unmanned systems, air, ground and maritime, do two things very, very well: they’re very good as a delivery system, and they’re very good at situational awareness. Men and women know how to do their job better than anyone else. What this technology offers up is a way to do it in a more effective and efficient and lifesaving manner.

MarketWatch: You’ve said you don’t use the word drone. Why not?

Toscano: It’s not that I don’t use the word drone. It’s that most people, when they hear the word drone, have either a negative connotation — they think it’s military, large, hostile, weaponized, autonomous — or they fixate on the thing that is actually just flying. The thing that actually flies is just a truck. It’s only 30% of the system.

What’s really important is the mission package payload, the communication link, the ground station, and mostly important, the human being. There is a human being or a person that is involved either in the loop, on the loop, with the system. When most people hear the word drone, I think it just has the wrong connotation.

MarketWatch: As a lobbyist, an association president, where do you find you need to do the most explaining here in Washington? There must still be concerns about privacy, or safety in the case of commercial drones.

Toscano: With any revolutionary-type technology — some people call it disruptive — there is always going to be this tremendous capability, but there is technology that can be misused either intentionally or unintentionally as well. There isn’t any technology that we’ve ever had that doesn’t have that potential.

I assume you have a computer. That computer allows you to do a lot of great and wonderful things. But it can also be used for bullying, it can be used for identity theft, it can be used for pornography. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with this technology. We have this thing called the automobile; we’ve had it around for 110 years, since Henry Ford came out with the assembly line. And we kill 33,000 people every year. We have 6.3 million accidents. It’s the leading cause of death [for] people between the age of 4 and 34 in this country. But yet we still drive cars every day.

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